Wisconsin’s Johnson: ObamaCare costs skyrocketing

This would not be the first time a government program exceeded its projected cost. When Medicare was passed in 1965, for example, the federal government estimated it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Medicare actually cost $110 billion in 1990.

In the case of ObamaCare, one of the principal sources of the lowball estimate used to justify the law is related to the insurance exchanges. The CBO originally estimated that one million Americans would lose their employer-sponsored care and be forced into the exchanges.

But a McKinsey & Co. study in June 2011 showed that 30%-50% of employers plan to stop offering health insurance to their employees once the health law is implemented in 2014. Last week the CBO breezily dismissed this and other studies on the ground that “it is doubtful that any survey conducted today could provide very accurate predictions of employers’ future decisions.”

As someone who purchased group health insurance for over 31 years, I fully understand why the McKinsey study is more credible than the CBO.